Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1393: Wobbles and Squabbles

Episode Date: June 25, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Albert Pujols’ touching return to St. Louis, the Dodgers’ deceptive Will Smith walk-off and the reason for the proportional increase in non-pulled home runs, Commissioner Manfred’s latest comments about the ball and dingers, Newsday beat writer Tim Healey’s clubhouse confrontation with Jason Vargas and Mets manager Mickey Callaway, […]

We'll grow closer together by being apart When my angel comes home It's been hell being here alone God tell me why has she flown so far away? I pray she won't stay another day. I'll be in heaven when my angel comes home. Please come home. Good morning and welcome to episode 1393 of Effectively Wild,

the baseball podcast on Fangraphs.com. Brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. How are you? What do you want to talk about? You sound disgusted with yourself for asking the obligatory question.

I mean, yeah. Yeah. So what's up? Yeah, I'm maintaining homeostasis. Nothing unusual going on here. So what do you want to talk about? I have a bunch of things to talk about. Me too.

I don't know what your topic is, but I've got some banter. I figured first we could talk about Albert Pujols and his homecoming weekend in St. Louis because I really enjoyed that. I wasn't circling it on the calendar in advance or anything, but I was surprised by how much I got out of that. I think it sort of took me by surprise even that this is a thing anymore, that we can go years without a player playing in a certain city. Because I just kind of think of baseball, it's interleague games all the time now throughout the season. time now throughout the season. It's odd to me almost that we could go, what, 2011 to 2019 now without Pujols having played in St. Louis, without Trout having played in St. Louis that whole time. And because there's so much interleague play, because everyone's got MLB TV and it's pretty easy to watch other people's games, I just don't really think of players not visiting a certain city as a phenomenon anymore.

But in this case, it was. Batting fifth, number five, first baseman, Albert Pujols. And it was pretty special that he came back to St. Louis and that he got the reception that he got, that he hit a home run, just like old times. And he got a standing ovation and a curtain call. And he had kind of an emotional press conference. And it was an opportunity to revisit just how good Pete Pujols was, which your colleague Bradford Doolittle did in an article for ESPN, but I think had come up even earlier. Like you were tweeting about how Mike Trout now has the best right-on-right OPS in history. And then Joe Pita pointed out to you on Twitter thatured our memories somewhat of how great he was in that period. Not that he was trout, but just this visit kind of gave us an opportunity to relive that a little. And it was really nice.

never have thought this necessarily in advance but seven or eight years whatever it is seven years is sort of like the perfect amount of time it usually when a player comes back he has either just left uh in which case it's good it's good to be able to say goodbye i mean you know they the player gets to do the back page ad and then the fans get to cheer for him when he comes back but there's some resentment uh usually yeah among some people and and it's just sort of like he's you probably you know he's usually still good and you're kind of mad that he's not on your team and or it's the opposite you get a guy who comes after he retires and he does the whole ceremony on the field and you know maybe there's a microphone or something like that but uh or maybe it's an old-timers game but he's no longer playing and Albert Pujols is kind of like right in the middle of playing and also an old-timer yeah and he's sort of like in a way he's

it's like a non-threatening visit that he's made and he hit that homer when St. Louis was up for nothing and it was a solo shot so it didn't really matter that much. You didn't have to be mad about it if you were Cardinals fans, so you could just purely celebrate it. And the 2-1 pitch to Albert Pujols. Albert hits it a ton out to deep left. He gave

us 11 years of memories we'll never forget. He's just given us another so yeah he's almost uh he's past being a threat so i guess there's no need to boo someone and after that long a time i mean i always think it's silly when great players get booed by their former fans just because they went somewhere and signed a deal. Sometimes it's not even them signing a deal. Sometimes they just get traded to another team, and yet they come back and get booed, which makes zero sense to me.

But in this case, he went for the most money. But in this case, he went for the most money. And I think our friend Will Leach wrote for MLB.com that neither the Cardinals nor Pujols has been quite the same since they separated. At least in some senses, I guess the Cardinals have done okay. But Will wrote very nicely in his newsletter this weekend about just what Pujols meant to him and his dad as Cardinals fans. And it was an opportunity also to relive the Pujols origin story and how he kind of came out of nowhere. And Derek Gould did a nice piece about a trade that could have happened back in, what, 2000 when the Cardinals opted to trade Brian Johnson,

a fourth-round pick, instead of Pujols. Oh, Ben, give me more. Give me more of this article. I love trades that didn't happen involving Pujols who... Oh, Ben, give me more. Give me more of this article. I love, I love trades that didn't happen involving Pujols and Brizard. So... No, that's the best kind of article of story. Read the whole thing. I will link to it for people who want to check it out. But it's, yeah, so this was a story about how Pujols, who had been, of course, a 13th round pick in the 1999 draft, the Padres had been interested in trading for him because a Padre scout had seen him in A-ball, I think, and was really fixated on him, thought he was the real deal. And the Cardinals were trying to trade for

a backup catcher, and they did. They traded for Carlos Hernandez and a minor league utility man in July 2000 at the trade deadline. And so the question was whether the Padres were going to get Pujols or Ben Johnson. And also Heathcliff Slocum was in the deal too. But the Padres were pushing for Pujols and it doesn't sound like it came that close. Like the Cardinals pretty much preferred Pujols but they had to choose the 13th round guy over the fourth round guy who had been higher on prospect lists and was more of a scout favorite but Walt Jockety was quoted the Cardinals former GM said they didn't want to give up either of them but there was no way they would trade Pujols because they had scouted their own system and

they had just loved what they had seen of him and And of course, he, the next spring, made the team out of spring training and was immediately amazing. So it doesn't sound like they were that close to doing it, but it was under consideration at least. And you can imagine how that could have changed things if the following decade of Pujols in St. Louis had actually been Pujols on the Padres. I'm very confused by this trade. What were the Cardinals trading anybody for?

Was this a salary dump? They wanted a backup catcher, Carlos Hernandez. So that was the centerpiece of the trade. Wow. Yeah. Anybody is a lot to give up for Carlos Hernandez. Can you imagine if it had been Albert Pujols? At this point in his career, Carlos Hernandez was 33,

had missed all of his age 32 season, had one year in his career with an OPS plus over 86, was batting 251, 316, 340 for the Padres with a 72 OPS plus and a negative 0.1 war. And then 17 games with the Cardinals later, he was out of baseball. Yeah, he must have gotten hurt or something. He had okay for them 17 games and that was it.

So good thing they didn't give up pools for him. Interesting that you look at this career and say he must have gotten hurt or something. Well, he did all right. He probably did get hurt or something because he only played the next year he played two games in triple a and then the next year he played 10 games in triple a anyway what i'm saying is that this would have gone down as the all-time yes trade the all-time trade yes the all-timer especially because great the very next year.

So it wasn't even like he was a lottery ticket. And then many years later, he panned out. It would have been a very quick turnaround between trade deadline of 2000 and dominance in 2001. So I don't get a sense of it. It wasn't like, oh, we completed the trade. Oh, we completed the trade like there, you know, like Barry Bonds was traded supposedly to Atlanta from the Pirates like the year before he ended up signing with San Francisco. And so that's a great what if there are other what ifs, I think, about like Tom Seaver being traded to the Braves, too. I guess everyone's almost being traded to the Braves. And Jim Leland scuttled that Barry Bonds deal reportedly because he went and complained to ownership about losing

Bonds but that deal was like done and agreed to and the press releases were being drawn up and so this was not quite in that category it was just something that was bandied about but the Cardinals were too smart to actually make this mistake Heathcliff Slocum also out of baseball after that year Nate Tebbs who was the fourth name in that minor leaguer, was gone from the Cardinals the next winter and out of baseball a year later. Quite the trade. If you

just replace Ben Johnson's name with Albert Pujols, then yes, we'd have a story. That's a good one. All right. Fifth highest, by the way, fifth highest career war through age 30 in history. That's how good Albert Pujols was when he left. The fifth in history. good for first baseman trout is center fielder and is just a little bit better at everything in a way that adds up so they're not equivalent but it's hard to remember just how amazing Pujols was because of the second phase of his career so we got to revisit it this weekend

thanks to the the scheduling algorithms so that was nice yeah that's true another thing that happened this weekend the Dodgers swept the Rockies and they did it on three walk-offs all by rookies, walk-off home runs, that is. And the last one of those was the most interesting to me. I don't know whether you heard the call that Charlie Steiner made on this home run, but I will embed a little bit of the audio here. And he's hitting.306 in Oklahoma City, and he pops it up into center field. Now drifting on back. That's more than a pop-up.

That's a walk-off home run. The ball kept carrying and carrying, and Smith hits it out, and the Dodgers win again on a walk-off home run. This time it's Will Smith. This was on Sunday, time it's Will Smith. This was on Sunday, and it was Will Smith who hit a pinch-hit homer to win this game for the

Dodgers. And if you haven't seen the highlight, it does not look like a home run whatsoever off the bat. Charlie Steiner had the call, and he got fooled. He said, it's a pop-up. Pop-up to center or something. And then he's like, and the ball just kept carrying and carrying and it was gone. And it went out like in the right center field power alley, except that Smith is a right-handed hitter. So it was an opposite field shot for him. Broadcasters get dinged for Obviously when they miscall A play particularly an important play And in my home city John Sterling

Is notorious for having You know home run calls Often with him it's a ball that he will Launch into his home run call and then it won't Actually be a home run this was the opposite I'm sure it's not just Sterling I think Steiner Has this reputation too although those Two used to be partners so maybe it was contagious

But I cannot blame Charlie Steiner one iota for getting this call kind of wrong because this did not look at all like a home run to me. And this kind of drove home something that listener Zach Lieberman had pointed out in an email to us this weekend. I don't know if it was prompted by this homer or not, but he said, over the past few years, I've noticed the increase of homers to the opposite field and wanted to know if it is truly an increase or a change in hitting styles. I find this especially interesting as there has been an increase in strikeouts, so you'd think there would be more homers to hit to the pull side. And this checks out. So this year of the 3,161 home runs that have been hit, 482 of them have been classified as opposite field according to Baseball Savant. So that's 15.2%.

And that is the highest percentage on record going back to 2008. And if you lump in straightaway shots as well, we're up to 41.5% of homers this year have either been straightaway or opposite field. Not sure which one this Will Smith homer was, but 41.5, that is pretty high because if you go back to 2011, let's say, it was 26.4. So many more of the home runs were pulled, and I can only assume that is because of the ball, because the ball is carrying much farther as it was on this Will Smith homer. And I would think that much like the ball and its more aerodynamic qualities seem to have benefited moderate power hitters who maybe need that extra boost to get them from the warning track to over the wall, maybe the same applies to balls hit to the opposite field or straight away that aren't crushed, aren't hit quite as far. So if you're going to pull the ball, perhaps there's

just enough homers that are pulled that are just way over the wall that you're not seeing proportionately the same increase there as you are to balls that are hit a little more weakly. That's my theory anyway, but this was a perfect illustration of that phenomenon. I actually, when I got that email, I wondered if it was inspired by a different home run this weekend, which I had just seen, which was Gio Urshela, who hit a home run against Wade Miley to break up Wade Miley's no hitter in the fifth inning. And it was my, I don't know, I don't know what the word I want to use is you know i was going to brand this phenomenon just now on the fly and i failed to come up with a brand name my week no come on

i don't know it's a bad home run of the week this is my bad home run of the week yeah anyway the will smith one i really have to give charlie steiner a lot of sympathy because I knew that it was a home run. I had already seen the tweets, the headlines. And then later I watched the video and I went, oh, I misread. It was just a flare walk off. Like I had seen something where it was like the third Dodgers walk off of the in a row or something like that. And then I saw the hit and I went, oh, well, it's just a single. Right.

A flare. Yeah. And then it was a home run and I knew yeah so that's uh the ball in action and relevant to that Rob Manfred recently kind of came clean about the baseball more than he has at least at times in the past there was an owner's meeting late last week and as reported by Newsday Rob Manfred acknowledged that the ball is mostly responsible orulated that perhaps if the pill is better centered inside the ball as a result of some change or improvement in the manufacturing process, it would wobble less as the ball is in the air. And for whatever physics-related reason, that reduced wobble would lead to better carry, decreased drag. And so he is saying- He's saying they finally fixed the baseball, that for years we've been playing with a wobbly

ball. A wobbly ball, yeah. And I mean, what a travesty to make baseball players for 150 years play with a low quality, deformed baseball wobbling all over the place. We finally got it right. We're finally we have a modern baseball. The baseball that the Jetsons promised us is finally here. Yep. Unintended consequences of the wobble.

And this doesn't necessarily mean that it's all the wobble or necessarily the wobble. that it's all the wobble or necessarily the wobble. It could still be something with the cover, the stitches, the laces, as some research by Meredith Wills has shown at The Athletic. There could be a difference in lace size. So I don't think it's conclusive, but it is notable that as opposed to in the fairly recent past when he seemed to kind of discount the findings of that study that suggested that the ball was responsible, now at least he seems to be acknowledging that it is, and maybe it has something to do with the

pill, which you wouldn't be able to tell from looking at the ball or feeling the ball, which is why there might be something else at play here because pitchers seem convinced that the ball actually feels different on the outside. So anyway, he also said that, you know, he's not sure that this is a bad thing or a good thing, that he thinks there's a segment of the fan base that likes lots of homers. There's also a segment of the fan base that likes lots of balls in play and that it's hard to please both of those demographics, which is kind of true. So he just sort of thinks that baseball is okay as it is or at least he is saying that which he probably should say regardless but anyway notable that he owned up to it to a

certain extent yeah albert pool halls through age 30 the best defensive first baseman in history the third best offensive first baseman in history And the fifth best base running first baseman in history Pretty good Great player Alright, we talked about the wobbly ball Yep Talked about Albert Pujols Yes, so a couple other newsy things that happened

First was just Frankie Montas getting suspended for PDs 80 games, he is probably done for the season I would think. He's eligible to return like the last week of September and of course he wouldn't be eligible for the playoffs and at that point you probably just don't even bring him back after that long layoff. So that is a big blow to the A's who were sort of saving us from a less interesting pennant race this year because they're in the thick Of the wildcard race they've in some Ways been a better team really

Than last year's team even though They're not in quite the same place in The standings but they went on a real Run late last year primarily Because their offense just Exploded but this year It seemed like they might be in line to make A run because their pitching

was looking up there was possibility for Lizardo and Puck and other guys to come back and perhaps reinforce that rotation but now they have lost their best starter on the season who was leading the American League in FIP that is a big blow for them and it's fairly rare these days fortunately for players to get suspended for PDs particularly for prominent players and good players and especially for prominent and good players who are right in the middle of pennant races and might actually make a difference in the standings when it's all said and done so I think the odds were against the A's making the playoffs anyway and now they're probably a little bit more against that happening but that is sort of a shame for

the a's obviously but also for fans because montas is pretty fun to watch and the a's are making the season more exciting hmm yeah i'm trying to remember the last PED suspension where it was a guy who like sort of fit the way that we used to think of steroids as being like you turn a bad player into a good player. And Montas, of course, was a good prospect and didn't come out of nowhere exactly. But this year he came out of nowhere. And I personally don't think that PEDs work that well personally. So I think that he became a good pitcher. But in the old days, we always used to kind of like look at guys who came out of nowhere

because we were so cynical and suspicious. And without any evidence at all, we would accuse them of doing drugs. Not publicly, not you and me under our byline, but like when I was a 20-year-old in college, I did. And I'm trying to remember the last guy who you thought, ah, yes, when he comes back, he won't be good anymore. Or that he did something and you went, ah, that's the drugs. And I don't know, is it, maybe is it, maybe was it Dee Gordon?

Did we feel that way about Dee Gordon in 2016? I don't, I think when Dee Gordon did it, I think i think it was more like see you don't have to be a big power hitter yeah a steroid guy maybe it was um melky melky cabrera when he had the batting title yeah yeah yeah uh or yeah was did he have what was he coming off a batting title or he he was hitting he was i don't remember what he was hitting but I think he was leading in that race or was on the way to a fantastic season. Man, I'm looking at the list of players who've been suspended and these things, they just roll right past me. I don't even remember these. Most of these, I watch these players play every day without it ever coming to mind that they were suspended for 80 games in whatever year.

I mean, wow! Him? This is a fun list. This is like a remember those guys except it's the opposite. It's like you don't remember those guys being on drugs. Well, alright, Frank Montas.

It's good that it's more of a rarity, although I guess you might think that because it's more of a rarity, you'd remember it more when it does happen. But really, I think you remember it more when they all come in a bunch, when there's some big, you know, Balco type scandal, when there's some sordid affair and investigations and a bunch of players get popped at the same time. I think we're probably less likely to remember this. I think we're probably less likely to remember this. And people are probably a little less likely now to ascribe the big performance jump to the drugs or label the players as evil people. I'm sure that is still prevailing sentiment in some quarters, but you get a little less of that now. So anyway, it's unfortunate when it happens to a player like Montas.

When it happens to a player like Montas but last thing that I wanted to bring up we are recording before Mickey Calloway's press conference on Monday afternoon where he will address his spat with former Effectively Wild guest Tim Healy of Newsday and maybe Brody Van Wagenen will speak to it sounds as if Calloway's job is safe for the moment. He received a vote of confidence in like the most stereotypical, prototypical vote of confidence way last week, I think it was, where Van Wagenen said something like, he's our manager, he has my confidence or something. It was like straight out of the GM vote of confidence playbook. And of course, Callaway will be kind of called on the carpet by the media and by ownership and rightfully so here because there was a clubhouse altercation where Healy, by his own accounting, said, you know, see you tomorrow, Mickey, on the way out after a kind of contentious session between Callaway and reporters, which came after the Mets blew a game that would have been nice for them to have, would have been a weekend sweep. And instead, Lugo gave up the lead and Callaway came under fire for not using Edwin Diaz, which seems like the story of his season and the Mets season is about Callaway using or not using Edwin Diaz at certain times. about Healy being a smartass, and then he was kind of cursing him out. And then he came back into the clubhouse, and Healy tried to explain what he had been saying,

and Coway said, get this guy out of here. And then Jason Vargas jumped in and essentially said he was going to fight Healy and had to be restrained by teammates, and he was cursing Healy out. And the Mets' ownership apologized to Healy for this treatment and said he would be welcome and the people involved would be talked to and perhaps Vargas will be suspended. I don't know. But this is kind of an ugly episode, always an ugly episode when this sort of thing happens. And naturally, the media will be on the side of the media member who is the target of this kind of criticism, but I think you almost have to be just because it looks so bad for a team employee who's

supposed to be the public face of the team and for whom interacting with the media is a big part of the job to just stop like this and lose his temper seemingly unfairly in this case. And it's something that I think it's hard for managers to come back from and in the past has tended to, whenever something like this has happened, it doesn't bode well for the manager. I mean, by the time it gets to this point, generally things have already not been going well, which is why it gets to this point. But I think it's pretty rare for a manager to come back

from this kind of thing and repair his reputation and his standing and keep his job for a very long time. So it reminds me kind of of the C. Trent Rosecrans episodes with Brandon Phillips and with Brian Price. And C. Trent is still covering the Reds and Brian Price is not managing them and Brandon Phillips is not playing for them. So i think that's often how it goes yeah it's a clubhouse is kind of a weird thing because if i mean you can sort of think about the way that we have our kind of public masks are the way that we present ourselves publicly we have our you know we have our private self which is what goes on in our brain and then you have your your self, which is not private. It's sort of public, like there are other people around, but it's not quite like the same way

that you are if you are a public figure acting in a public way. And then you have your public self where you're kind of maintaining your brand. And in our social selves, we'd say things that are, I mean, there's a lot of dynamics. There's a lot of social dynamics at play. You have your moments where you're in a bad mood or where something, even somebody that, you know, maybe somebody that you love, they rub you the wrong way and you say something that you regret. And we, we like, you're kind of unguarded in those social moments in a way that you're not when you're in your public, in your public space. And I sort of feel like the clubhouse is this really weird place

because these are all public figures. Well, they're arguable. I don't know if you would argue that journalists are public figures in the same way, but Mickey Calloway is a public figure. His job is to put on a public performance. And after the game, he is called upon to explain

some of his thinking to the public, the media being his conduit, and sometimes to deal with the public reckoning of a mistake. And it's all very public. But when you're in the clubhouse, though, it feels much less public and much more social. There's like, like guys are dressing. They're sometimes nude, which is a very, you know, private private more private than public act they're lounging they're wearing their street clothes they're sometimes they're drinking a beer there are friendships there's play

and even among the different kind of the the media and the players and the different hierarchies there there's still sort of like you know the person you've got an individual relationship with each person in the room in a way that you don't when you're in the public and you're just speaking to the broad faceless audience or the broad faceless mass out there. And it sort of, I think it kind of has a tendency to sometimes cause people to forget that it's public and their,

their guard is dropped. They're thinking about this as this is just your day, your work environment, your social environment. And you do something that I think if Mickey Calloway had been sitting on a chair at a table in a conference room, it would have been very clear to him that this was a public moment, that he was presenting the public Mickey Calloway. And this probably never would have happened. But there's just something about being close to people in the sealed off dark, you know, under the stadium part of the clubhouse that makes you feel like no one's there. And you're just like, folks doing life. And you know, we all

do things. I mean, I say things that are hurtful sometimes to people who I love more than anything in the world and come to regret it. So it's not surprising at all that probably a reporter who has a relationship with the manager and a manager who has a relationship with the reporter, that there would be a dynamic that would develop that looks like really weird and embarrassing after the fact for Mickey Calloway. I am embarrassed for him. I mean, clearly this is like a disaster. It's absolutely disastrous for him. And so I don't know. I'm just sort of wandering around

how I think that this could possibly happen. Yeah. I mean, we don't know, obviously, if there's a history between these guys. I mean, reporters talk to managers all the time. It's a daily occurrence if you're on the beat. Perhaps he's been stewing over something Healy said a long time ago. Who even knows? And it just boiled over in this moment of frustration. And obviously, if you're a manager who has constantly been criticized, often it seems like legitimately, but probably Callaway is dealing with the Wilpons. His hands are probably tied in a lot of ways. I'm sure it's a frustrating job in a lot of respects, and some of that he's brought on himself and some of it he hasn't. But

this part, obviously, he did, and this makes everything much worse. It seemed like it couldn't have been much worse going into this game for Callaway and his public perception. But at this point, after this, it seems like just a matter of time until you almost have to make a change, regardless of whether it will improve the team or not, just to kind of change the narrative a little bit. And for Vargas, of course, who is a veteran player and has been around a long time and should know

that you do not attack reporters or try to attack reporters, even if there is provocation. And this case there really wasn't so hopefully he will be disciplined in some way too but yeah it's it's an ugly episode and it's a weird thing when this kind of workplace dynamic breaks into like macho posturing or violence or something because it's like still this sort of jocks versus nerds kind of atmosphere in a clubhouse and if you're on the beat you're you're pretty at home there and you're friendly with people but there are these moments i guess where you suddenly remember that you don't totally belong there i I mean, you do. You're guaranteed access, but people don't really want you there,

and sometimes they resent you being there. It's almost like the part in the Stompers book where you got shut out of the clubhouse for the team meeting, and you were very upset. You were maybe more upset about that than anything else in that season because you were just kind of being excluded, and we felt like we were part of

the team part of the story and then suddenly the door was barred and and by the manager in that case even though the the team sentiment may not have been in line with that so well and and excluded publicly too like right if if if there had been you know i i feel like i feel some sympathy for for i feel a lot of sympathy for Tim here. In a lot of ways, I could see that being a really almost in some ways frightening situation. cooler the cooler person the more popular person the one with the social capital is uh insulting you and is telling you you're unwelcome it it really i don't know it touches the the seven or eight year old part of yeah of ourselves that we never really grow past and yeah i mean all of us i think are to some degree afraid to go out into the world. And it's because this could happen. Somebody could make fun of you

with their cooler friends. Right. Yeah, it's like getting picked on in the locker room. It's, you know, right back to high school or grammar school for some people. And also it added insecurity because it jeopardizes your performance

of your job in some ways. I mean, in this case, it probably jeopardizes Calloway's job much more than it does Tim's. But if you're worried that the manager won't talk to you, if you're worried that the team won't talk to you out of solidarity with the manager, I mean, you don't want to be part of the story in that way. In some ways, maybe it's beneficial to get that attention and get to write about it or something.

Maybe it's beneficial to get that attention and get to write about it or something, but I think most people want to get along and do their jobs. And obviously you have to question the players and team personnel and hold them accountable and ask them difficult things sometimes. But for the most part, you're around this team all the time. You're with them every day. You don't want that to be a tense, uncomfortable situation. So no one wants this to happen. Yeah. Yep. All right. that's all i got all right ben episode 1330 okay you guys answered a question from tanner the question was is there

a consensus around the definition of the term baseball iq are there specific actions that a player can make that gives them the reputation of having a high or low baseball iq or is it as simple as not making errors? Personally, I associate the term with well-timed base running, daring do, and unusual defensive plays like throwing behind runners. Could it also be extended to more subtle things? And this, your guys' answer of this frustrated me. Because Tanner, to me it seems like Tanner was asking

specifically about the term baseball IQ. And you both, Jeff and you, had a nice conversation. I thought it was a productive conversation about baseball intelligence and about what gets one person a reputation for baseball intelligence as a baseball player and what sorts of things are actually representative of intelligence in baseball. And you continually use the term baseball IQ as a synonym for baseball intelligence. But I felt like Tanner was not just asking, what is smart baseball? What what is a smart what how does a smart baseball players smartness manifest?

But this term, this term baseball IQ as a cliche, as a term that people choose to use specifically, he says the word term repeatedly in the email, the term baseball IQ. And so I didn't really feel like you answered that question. IQ over the past 365 days in major newspapers, because I also was curious to know what is it that people mean when they use this term specifically. Now, I just want to very quickly also sum up what you guys said about baseball intelligence, which was all three of you. In fact, you, Jeff and Tanner all referred to some sort of like clever defensive play. You, for instance, said that you thought that baseball IQ often is doing something clever that sticks in people's minds. And Jeff said, you basically need one clever play.

And here you were talking about getting a reputation for being intelligent. One clever play. And then I thought Jeff summed up your conversation at the end when he said there are different levels of baseball IQ. You've got your very thoughtful baseball players who are able to think through a problem. And then you got your players who are able to do something really good on the fly. I think you concluded with basically that you get a reputation for having high baseball IQ by throwing behind a base runner. You just kept on mentioning throwing behind a base runner, but that actually a high baseball IQ would be something like, well, maybe Joey Votto being

an obvious example of kind of knowing how to approach baseball so that you'll succeed. But more broadly, just being good at baseball usually requires some form of baseball IQ. So I am going to tell you what the public use of baseball IQ typically refers to. So first of all, 90, I don't know, 8% of uses of baseball IQ and high baseball IQ are in reference to amateur players, youth players, high school players, college players, draftees. It is, I was surprised to find this out, but the term is mostly used to describe a young player who is lower than the highest levels of baseball, but plays with a sort of sense of awareness that is probably uncommon among high school players. So high school baseball coaches absolutely love using high baseball IQ to refer to their high school baseball player who's not you know a weeded out screw up right like someone who someone who takes the game seriously and knows how to get a bunt down

it's like your classic he's mature it means mature more than anything else i think and so that uh makes sense it and it's not going to really apply that much when we talk about major leaguers because major leaguers i don't know mature is uh is kind of comes with the territory we already know we already treat all veterans as though they're somehow more mature by being veterans and we don't need another term so so when it gets to major leaguers it's used much less commonly but here are the players in the last year who have been referred to as high baseball IQ. Logan Forsyth, Nicky Lopez, Manny Machado, Josh Donaldson, Dexter Fowler, Mitch Hanager, Yadier Molina, Jed Jerko, DJ LeMahieu, and Tyro Estrada. Those last two were linked. Tyro Estrada was being compared to DJ LeMahahue saying he has a lot of

dj lemahue attributes etc etc high iq and so on so um a really a mixed bag there a very interesting group of yeah players who are superstars players who are role players players who are strong players who are uh you know kind of like less powerful players who are legends players who i just uh learned how to pronounce their name in that half second that dylan edited out so did it tend to cite a specific example or was it just i'm going to yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you how they each got got their uh their high baseball iq explained so look for Logan Forsythe, high IQ, high baseball IQ was basically a synonym for prepared. He's well prepared. He's watching the game a lot and thinking things through in advance, putting in a lot of work to understand what is going to come. Hunter Pence is

the one who called him high baseball IQ. And in the same paragraph, he always does his homework. So that kind of thing. Nicky Lopez actually is a little bit of an exception to this because his high baseball IQ was attributed to him by his high school coach. So even though he is a major leaguer, this was used by a high school coach. And it was used kind of in the Extonian way where it was a synonym for grit and ability to thrive, even though he is not strong. There were no real examples of high baseball IQ. It was just that he's not a physically dominant kind of player. And yet he has managed to work his way up each level by succeeding in his baseball IQ. Manny Machado was named high baseball IQ by Austin Hedges. And there's not a specific, but it's more along the lines of what you and Jeff were talking about, where to succeed,

you almost have to be doing a lot of smart things. And these smart things are things that ball players would, I guess that ball players would recognize, but would not necessarily be anticipated by all ball players. So what Austin Hedges is, you don't do what he's done consistently for that many years without really having a high baseball IQ. I've tried to let him walk me through some of his thought process and what gives him an advantage, which is his brain. He's really, really smart. I don't think people understand how smart he is.

There's also an aspect there of using high baseball IQ, I think, to counter a narrative. I imagine that Austin Hedges knows that Manny Machado is criticized by certain media folks and certain fans for, you know, not hustling or for, you know, I don't know, coasting, would you say that some people think Manny Machado coasts? And Austin Hedges is saying very explicitly that that's just not how it works. That's not how it works for Manny Machado. He's a genius. And so there's a way of kind of countering an implicit criticism with the term high baseball IQ. Mike Schilt called Jim Edmonds, who I didn't name because he's not a player, but Jim Edmonds, high baseball IQ. And it was about seeing tiny little advantages in the other team or in the game that you can exploit.

So an example was when he spotted a tell in a pitcher named Reyes, maybe Alex Reyes, I don't know. Reyes's pre-pitch load, Edmonds explained to the pitcher how hitters, oh yeah, probably to Alex Reyes. Edmonds explained to the pitcher how hitters might be the next to find it. Reyes fixed the glitch before they could. So kind of spotting small things and being a little bit more detail oriented than the average player. Josh Donaldson is kind of the ability to adjust. He was called high baseball IQ by Alex Anthopoulos. The ability to adjust to his environment. This was in the context of him being able to hit well in any ballpark because he's able to drive the ball different ways depending on kind of the advantages of the ballpark. Mike Schilt again on Dexter Fowler used it basically as a synonym for experience and

having learned from the experience. Tori Lovello called Mitch Hanager high baseball IQ with no explanation. It was just a long list of compliments. Buster Posey called Yadier Molina high baseball IQ, but not for his catching, which was interesting. Buster says, I'd like to pick his brain. Maybe he's just found the slot that works as far as increased power. He's talking about Molina's power this year.

I noticed that he gets his foot down early, or maybe it was last year. I don't know. Maybe he gets, he's just found the slot that works as far as increased power. I noticed that he gets his foot down early at times, and then he'll go with the big leg kick. I think it speaks to how smart he is and how high his baseball IQ is based on who is on the mound. I think he takes his shot at certain times against certain types of pitchers. He knows the guys he's better off staying short with. So this would be, again, kind of being prepared, thinking through each situation independently or individually, and having a plan to attack that situation. And Jed Jerko, high baseball IQ, this is Mike Schilt again, high baseball IQ, very smart guy. They say pinch hitting is the hardest thing to do in sports, and I would agree with that. It's a challenging thing to do, but Jed will figure it

out. Smart guy, talented guy. So I don't even know if I got all of them. I don't know if I covered all the people I named, but basically it seems to me that you have none of the throwing behind base runners aspect of this, at least in the ones that we named. It's not usually a single play or a flashy play, but it's an ability to prepare and an ability to, I think, help your teammates understand the game a little bit better. I think probably what it means usually when ballplayers and ball people say it is everybody in baseball knows a whole lot more about baseball than the average fan does. They've been playing it their whole life. They've been coached. They know it all. And then among those, there's a certain percentage of players

who are able to even see one level deeper in terms of their preparation, in terms of the game theory, in terms of what the opponent is doing, in terms of the situation, and is able to take advantage of that as well as share it with other people. So that's what I think people mean when they say high baseball IQ and with maybe with a little even emphasis on the ability to raise the IQ of the team around them. All right. Well, there you go. You got two answers, Tanner, separated by five months. Yeah. And the first, by the way, the first that I found of this term was in 1982. That doesn't mean it's the first.

The newspaper archives are a little harder to search before that. But Gene Mock, 1982. Finally, there's the contribution of Mock, a man best known in the past for his high baseball IQ and low finishes, almost all with certifiably rotten teams. When I was looking in the 80s and so on, high baseball IQ, 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, more often referred to managers and broadcasters than ballplayers. It seems that to some degree it has migrated to ballplayers and was more used for off the field types. Also in the 80s and 90s, about half of references to baseball iq were about the mets or the yankees

for some reason oftentimes critically and so it might be that this term took off from new york writers i don't know about that ron garden hire was uh when he was hired as a coach i think uh maybe he was still a player was described as having above average baseball iq uh and bobby valentine said it seemed the year he was on the DL, there was a lot of savvy stuff. He was still into the game, even though he was injured. And that might be to me, the most baseball IQ thing that you can do

is pay attention from the bench. Yep. That's a good one. All right. Episode 1328. Ben, I just want to do real quick. I want to ask you a question. How high do you think you can jump?

Like if I paid you $500 to jump as high as you could how how how high would a basketball rim be that you could touch and you can make up a number it doesn't matter oh boy just say any no say nine feet four inches three and a half feet what that's how high i can jump no no no no it's it's how high is the rim itself you can touch a rim that's nobody knows what three you can't jump three and a half feet you said any number okay all right a foot and a half all right a foot and a half you can jump a foot and a half for five hundred dollars you'll jump a foot and a half sure now if i how am i gonna put this If you have to jump one foot eight inches to escape an alligator, could you do it? Yes.

You think you could? So a foot and a half was not your max? Yeah, if my life depends on it, I could probably get a little more. Okay, what about a foot and 10 inches? I have no idea. Now, let me ask you another question. How long do you think you could run a four-minute mile? Like, could you run a four-minute mile for a quarter mile, a lap?

Could you run it and again just pick whatever? I think I could probably do it for maybe a quarter mile, sure. All right. I think I've done a six-minute. What if that same, did I say alligator or crocodile? Alligator. What if that same alligator was chasing you and you had to run it that longer? You would die when you stopped.

Then how long do you think you could run a four minute mile pace farther than before but i i don't think i could do a mile so somewhere between a quarter and a full yeah i think you could maybe go three quarters it's what would stop you it seems like it'd be very hard to go, well, that's that. At some point, you're just not physically capable. Exactly. You're not. So you guys in 1328 talked about a baseball team, how many games a team would win if they were playing under penalty of death. Yeah. And you talked about how baseball is actually not a great sport for this because the season is so long and it would be hard to keep it going for that long. And I just listened thinking that you got it exactly wrong, that it is very hard to do a burst of physical activity significantly better than you already do that, you know, you jump as high as you jump. It'd be hard to add a foot to your jump just because you

were going to die. Otherwise you're already jumping more or less as high as you jump it'd be hard to add a foot to your jump just because you were going to die otherwise you're already jumping more or less as high as you can i don't know that there's that much there for it but i feel like your stamina would be incredible if you knew that you had to have incredible stamina and so to me baseball is actually the perfect sport to to get extra wins now i don't know if you you could be so so stressed out that you would choke and panic and do everything wrong and lose as you guys talked about but if we're just talking about being able to tap into physical reserves to another level of physical performance it seems to me that you would want a sport like baseball where the grind and fatigue and the ability to the inability to motivate yourself every day to be your very best self, every pitch,

every plate appearance, to stay focused, to stay concentrated, to see the stakes, to care deeply about what you're doing is such a character and such a source of our shortcomings that to me, this is where you maybe have the most impact. Yeah, maybe so. It's just that baseball players already talk about the grind. And I guess you could say that this would be a way to counteract the grind because you're just thinking about dying constantly if you slack off at all. But on the other hand, wouldn't it just exacerbate the grind if you're just constantly under pressure? You're playing on pain of death if you lose. Wouldn't that just make you exhausted and wouldn't you not be able to sustain that pace?

I mean, I guess if you're facing death, maybe you can always go a little bit further or higher or faster than you would under normal circumstances. But it just seems to me that like an Olympic event or something where it's like just a short burst of speed or power is what you need, then it's like the adrenaline can get you through it.

But can you keep calling on adrenaline over a seven-month season? I don't know that you can. So I don't know. I'm sticking with my original answer. Okay. You're welcome to. I was probably thinking of this more in comparison to other sports with seasons and thinking that I might rather have the every day than have the six days off to think about.

Yeah, that's true. All right, Ben, I want to ask you if this is a record. I have seen this record cited as a record. In fact, I'm going to read a tweet from somebody who says, The streak is alive. There's been a home run in every game played by the Mariners this year, 81 and counting, extending their major league record. Now, the Yankees, I think it's the Yankees right now,

have a franchise record by homering in 26 straight games. Right. And I can see how that is a record. Homering in 26 games is a record. And if they allowed a home run in a franchise record 26 straight games, well, it's not something I would care that much about, but I would also see how that is a record. But I do not see how combining a positive act by one half of the team

with a negative act by the other half of the team makes a record. No. So they've hit or allowed one? They have hit or allowed one, yes. Every game they played has involved a home run. No, I don't think that counts. Okay, good. Do you prolong the record by giving up a home run intentionally?

Do they celebrate on the desk, on the dugout, on the bench? Right, I don't think so. No no it doesn't count all right last week we talked about jackie bradley jr nearly stealing second base before the pitch had been delivered and what would happen if if he had gotten there would he get credited with a steal or would he have just advanced on the ensuing play would he have to go back to first if there was a fly ball and so on but jackie bradley jr had not quite gotten to second base and so this was all a theoretical question and then a couple days later a friend of the pod darren says sends us a sends me a message letting me know that this happened the next day wow which is really coincidental yeah this was malik smith in seattle

and it was a somewhat less hard to explain situation because there was nobody they were in a full shift there were two strikes two outs he was on second base third base was unoccupied and so he just took off and the pitcher didn't even react he got to third uh clearly got to third the camera was able to cut to him getting to third before the pitch was delivered but all the same same basic idea here and so uh the next pitch was a strike it was a strike out so but malik smith was given credit for the stolen base but here's the really wild thing same pitcher on the mound both dylan bundy and so this seems like it's just a thing that you can maybe do with dylan bundy when when it was jackie bradley you felt like you were seeing a blooper it was like ah jackie

bradley left too early ah but the other team didn't get the pitcher's attention in time that's not how baseball is supposed to work. But the Malik Smith thing, I mean, Bundy saw him. Bundy looked at him. He's like, I do not care. And just threw his pitch, focused on his pitch and got the strike. And so now it makes me think that the Bradley thing was kind of probably the same, maybe the same thing.

Dylan Bundy just has a theory of how to pitch with two strikes and two outs. And it involves recognizing that he's on the Orioles. None of this matters that much. And he just wants to go home. So it does seem like there are easy outs available to Dylan Bundy if he wants to. He has not been a pitcher who is otherwise allowed many stolen bases. He's only allowed five this year, including the one to Malik Smith. So he's not like ignoring base runners generally,

but maybe he's ignoring base runners with two outs and two strikes. And so far it seems, I don't know, is it working? He walked one guy and he struck out another guy and who knows, who knows if it's working. All right. Hot tip for any players out there who are on base. Just take it. Two strikes and Dylan Bundy. All right. Hot tip for any players out there who are on base. Just take it. Two strikes and still in Bundy.

All right, Ben. I mean, this was going to be an episode about bullpens, about relief pitchers, updating some things, and then playing is he good. But I think that we'll just do the updating some things and not do is he good. Yeah, we did that pretty recently anyway. Well, but yes, I thought about that we did it pretty

recently but i i was thinking that it might actually be the sort of thing where that by doing it again not that much later it hammers home the underlying principle that you're talking about which is that players go from really good to really bad like so fast that you can't possibly keep track of them like uh dylan floro for all i know is bad now let's see let's see i'm gonna check dylan floro wasn't he the guy yep who had the zero era yeah he's actually still good and uh so uh there goes that one chad green who at the time had the worst era in baseball still has anRA of seven and so he's bad but is he bad I don't know yeah that's the thing if if you had like a really terrible or really excellent well it's pretty you can go from zero ERA to a high ERA or higher pretty quickly yes

you're Chad Green and you've got whatever he had and it's hard to whittle that down when you're a reliever only pitching a few times a week for a few innings when when you do is he good in early may then then you're basically doing does he have good numbers this year if you do it in late june now you've got the uncertainty of how do you decide if he's good when his season era might be 6.97 or 6.93 as Chad Greens is. But on the other hand, he's allowed one run in June. He has thrown nine innings and struck out 16 and walked one. He is being used as a two inning opener for the Yankees. And the other day he was almost brought in to close because Aroldis Chapman was unavailable that day. So the guy with the 70 RA was the Yankees right-handed closer because

he's good. And so then that would, it's a different game in June is what I'm saying. In his last eight games, he's got 20 strikeouts in 11 innings with one run. So I think Chad Green is good and he also has a 70 RA. So that would have been a different game is what I'm saying. That's why I was justifying doing it again in late June. But we're not going to do that. We don't have the time. So let's just update a few bullpen trends. Bullpen relief ERAs are still worse than starter ERAs.

This is a big, significant thing. We wondered if it could possibly hold. It never happens. Relievers are usually about 7 seven or eight percent better collectively this would be the first time ever that or at least in you know semi-modern relief pitcher usage that relievers have been worse than pitchers and i'm here to tell you that it's still true and in fact it's so true that tom verducci wrote a article about it just today just came came on the wire just a few minutes before we started recording.

Two things in this article I want to ask you quickly about. One is a quote from Brian Snitker who says, I think what you're seeing now around baseball is that a lot of elite relief arms are wearing out. And I'm not sure I buy that. I think that there is a dilution here that there's many many many more pitchers throwing relief innings and those pitchers are going to come from the lesser classes of pitcher but as far as the wearing out it seems like we're seeing the exact opposite that part of what's exasperating this might actually be that teams are being more

cautious with their pitchers i looked at well the well, the Yankees, as an example, have not used a relief pitcher three days in a row once all year. Yeah. Not a single time, which I have not looked up how uncommon that is. I'm going to guess all the way uncommon, that it has probably never happened before, that a team has never used. Three days used to be normal. Four days is when you would start thinking, is he available?

Three days used to be fairly normal. But I looked at zero days of rest, is he available? Three days used to be fairly normal. But I looked at zero days of rest. So that would be two days in a row. And we were on pace for 2,800 this year. Now, this could be a seasonal thing, but I would think that September would actually be the least no days of rest month. And so I would not think that what I'm saying is, I don't think these numbers would probably be misleading. But 2,800 this year on pace for 2,800 this year. There were 3,056 last year, which is more. There were 3,000 in 2017. And then there were 3,257 in 2016, which is 400 more than we're on pace for about 14%

or so more than we're on pace for this year. about 14% or so more than we're on pace for this year, and 3,320 in 2015, which is even more, which is 65 more than there were in 2016. So the elite arms seem to maybe be protected. Now, on the other hand, as either Brian Snitker or Tom Verducci points out, the elite relievers might be throwing harder,

more high effort, more power sliders that teams are handling them more carefully and also also they're flaming out yeah exactly it has always felt like the story of relievers is that there is a lot of elite relief arms wearing out that that seems like why relievers have always seemed like questionable investments because the guy who strikes out 14 batters per nine one year is too wild and gets hurt and strikes out 10 and so on the next year. That's just relief pitchers. But right. So what do you think? Are elite relief arms wearing out more than usual in your anecdotal estimation? assert with any degree of confidence no i mean it could be true but it's not something that like i've noticed and intuitively feel to be true so i would have to check okay secondly second quote freddie freeman if you bring four or five relievers into the game every night what are the chances that one of them is going to have a bad night pretty good right there's more to that quote

that i want to get to but that has always been a bit of folklore that if you go to your relievers, you're eventually going to find the guy who doesn't have it that night. And I've always thought that maybe this is not, I'm on the fence. I feel like logically this doesn't seem to hold up because you're also, if they don't have it that night, you're going to get them out pretty quick. You're not asking him to go five innings. Like if you have a starter who has a bad night. And so, but here's the other thing. It seems like if relievers really were, you know,

kind of like within their range of true talent every night, that there weren't wild swings of like, it is his night, it isn't his night, then we would have seen a reliever put up a 60-inning scoreless streak by now. Like there should be longer scoreless streaks for relievers than there are for starters because it's so much easier to be a reliever 60 inning scoreless streak by now. Like this, there should be longer scoreless streaks for relievers than there are for starters, because it's so much easier to be a reliever and they

have crazy low ERAs. The fact that we still don't see relievers putting up 50 and 60 inning scoreless streaks every once in a while suggests to me that there really is a wide range that when you wake up every day, it could just be not your day and that you really might be looking for the time bomb every day. So I generally think that I disagree with this idea that if you go to five pitchers, the odds are one is not going to have it that night. But I am sort of also interested. Yeah, I've always been conflicted and fascinated by this theory and I'm not sure exactly what to think

about it i do think that there is some truth to the idea that guys have better stuff on on some days than others so i don't think that pitchers are exactly the same every day and the fluctuation in results is purely just random or weather or the batters they're facing or the umpire or whatever. So I do think there's some fluctuation there. And I've seen some evidence that supports that. Like Rob Arthur wrote something for FiveThirtyEight a couple of years ago about how you could predict pitcher hot streaks. Like sometimes pitchers just have better stuff and it does predict whether they will continue

to have better stuff. And there is actually a an interesting thing that clay dreslow one of our listeners and the creator of the baseball mogul sim game posted in our facebook group just about five weeks ago and he did a sim to see whether it's true that like starting pitchers have good stuff, better stuff on some days. So he looked at like the distribution of actual starts and then he and average days does a better job of modeling MLB than the purely random model. And he says, but you don't need a large effect. So the short answer is that I think the conventional wisdom is true. The pitchers do have good and bad days because there's some evidence in favor of it.

And I certainly can't disprove it. But the effect is smaller than you might think. It's quite possible for a pitcher having a good day to give up a grand slam in the first inning and then settle down the rest of the way, which I think is true. I think there are good days and bad days, but I don't think it's like you run into one guy who is just so far off his game that he's like normally a 3 ERA pitcher, but today he's a 7 ERA pitcher. I mean, conceivably that could happen, but I doubt that happens. pitcher. I mean, conceivably that could happen, but I doubt that happens. Maybe your command is a little off or you're losing a little velo or you don't have your perfect feel for your curveball or whatever. So I'm sure that kind of thing happens, but it makes sense that like the more pitchers you go through, the more likely you are to get to someone who's having an off day.

But it's also true that, you know, starters, it doesn't seem that predictive. Like if you're good for six innings, it doesn't mean you're going to be good for a seventh inning. And I don't know, because as you said, you get them out of there quickly. It just doesn't quite track for me. I bet there's like a tiny bit of truth to it, but not enough to explain what we're seeing with the bullpens this year. Yeah. OK. So so fory's uh his main he has like three explanations or theories or factors here that he says might be involved in this bullpen collapse the first one is acceptance of openers and it doesn't seem like he means that

in the sense that relievers are now starting games and skewing the stats because some starting pitcher stats are actually relievers and vice versa it seems like he is saying that the more built-in abbreviated starts a team uses the more trouble you're in when one of your traditional starters simply doesn't have it and that game also becomes a bullpen game there's a compounding effect with too many short starts so he's suggesting i guess that the opener makes bullpen performance worse, which I don't know. I don't know if I buy it. Wait, so did you say that he's not saying that it's simply a matter of attrition?

Well, he isn't saying that it's just like a matter of how we define starts and relief appearances so that, you know, Ryan Stanek is skewing the stats by pitching an inning. So he's saying that it has a compounding effect because i don't know that i follow it but when your traditional starter doesn't have it then that game becomes a bullpen game so you use the opener then your traditional starter doesn't have it and then you end up doing a bullpen game but i don't know why that's necessarily different than just having the starter start and the starter doesn't have it and then you still have to do a bullpen game so i don't know that i follow and then his second reason is more pitching changes which i think is is a reason just more pitchers being used and then the third one is

more home runs and and he points out that like the this is like the second highest slugging percentage allowed by relievers ever this year, but it doesn't explain why home runs would affect relievers more than starters. So I don't know that this necessarily explains anything to me either. So to me, it seems like the effect, aside from like some slight skewing because of the opener, otherwise it's just shorter outings for relievers and thus more relievers having to be used and as you said teams being more careful so that you're not using your best relievers back to back or back to back to back and so you just need to to go to the bottom of the barrel a little bit to get pitchers

to pitch in your bullpen all that said it still surprises me that that relievers have been worse on the hole than starters. Wasn't the Tango's rule of 17 that relievers strike out 17% more batters when they're relieving than when they're starting? Yes. That they allow 17% lower BABIP when they're relieving than when they're starting and that they allow 17% fewer homers when they're relieving than when they're starting. Yeah, something like that. So theoretically, the home run thing should affect starters more? Yeah, I don't know.

I don't see how it affects relievers or bullpens disproportionately. So the fact that it's such a sudden downturn also, I mean, it's not really one year,'s i guess it's like a two-year trend really yeah because i mean it's i guess it's a three-year downturn well no it's not even really is it this year basically last year went last year more or less cut the gap last year went from your normal every year was like you know there was some fluctuation but seven or eight percent better to then last year i think starters were three percent better yeah and then this year starters are like a half a percent better by yeah by runs allowed not by ops by the way but by runs allowed and so it's

like the last year took one jump and this year took an equal jump yeah so the fact that it's two years or a year and a half makes it more believable than if it were half, but it still confuses me because what has changed so dramatically in these past two years? These are, other than the opener, this is a long-term trend toward more relief pitchers, and I think we're actually seeing fewer very short outings, right? seeing fewer very short outings, right? I think the average relief outing at least hasn't really decreased at least in the last couple of years. And I think there maybe are more pitching changes still just because starters are not going as deep into games. Maybe some of these trends have accelerated a little bit in the last year and a half, but it's not so drastically different that something that had held up pretty consistently for like decades, I would expect to be wiped away within 18 months or so. Well, when we talked about this a month ago, a month and a half ago, we addressed whether

the opener is skewing the numbers. And at the time I said, it seems clear that the opener is probably not skewing the numbers for our purposes, because at that point there were very few opener games. There were very few bullpen games. And we talked about how it was interesting that it hadn't really taken off, that there were a couple of games by a couple of teams, but mostly it was just the Rays. And the Rays were even doing it, I think, slightly less than they had in the latter half of last year but since then the opener has become much more common across baseball that April it was not May and June it has so this year there have been so the way I search for these starts is a game where the starter goes does not complete three innings does not throw more than 45 pitches, I think, and does not allow

more than three runs. So that's going to miss some if the opener gets blown out and allows four runs, he's not going to show up and it's going to capture some if the starting pitcher gets a blister. But basically, this shows you the games where the starting pitcher did not go deep, did not throw a lot of pitches, and did not get removed for being terrible. And there have been about 87 of those through 75 games this year, so there's about one a day, which is double what there were last year, the same point, and it's already double what there were in any previous season through the entire year.

So they have picked up. There's a lot of teams doing it there for you know, usually just for like one spot. But like Cam Bedrosian's had seven of these Chad greens at six of them. So those are teams that are using this as really as a spot in the rotation. And it is there have been enough now that it is a little bit hard to fully discuss the statistics, the starter versus reliever statistics, without digging into how much that is affecting things. And so I am kind of at a limit of how much I can rule out right now

without doing that work. Okay, yeah. So I'd like to see conclusively like openers removed to the best of our abilities and then the rest. I guess you'd maybe also have to remove just the headliners or the bulk guys or whatever just wipe away all of that and see the traditionally used pitchers you know other than the lighter workloads and see because the gap is small it's like you know the starters this year have a park-adjusted FIP of 100.

That's average. Relievers have a park-adjusted FIP of 101. So they're just a tiny, tiny bit worse. And strikeout minus walk rate difference is like half a percentage point. And so it's enough that maybe removing openers would push things back toward relievers. Probably not enough, though, that the gap would be as big as it has been historically, but at least to the side that makes sense logically to me, because I get that the gap would be growing smaller just because the difference between what

a starter is and what a reliever is is growing smaller and because you're using more relievers and you need to get more guys who wouldn't have been pitching previously and even though player development has improved and maybe teams are better at making guys like that maybe that's not keeping pace with the lighter workloads so that makes sense to me but if it does swing fully in the direction of bullpens being worse, then that will mystify me still. Verducci's contention is that relievers are getting worse. And I also would say that there's good reason to think that collectively, collectively, because the population has expanded, they would be getting worse. However, it is still probably my guess that what is more expected and what is more happening is that starters are getting better that starters are are better and better at taking advantage of the decreased demands

that are put on them and that if you can only compare if you can only tell how good a group is in relation to another group then it's hard to figure out which one is moving but i sort of feel like this phenomenon is underselling how much starting pitchers are moving toward getting better. Yeah, because maybe they've just gotten to the point where they've all internalized that they don't need to go into a game expecting to go deep. And so they're pitching like relievers would pitch.

There's also fewer of them because of the opener. There are fewer pitchers that are kind of five and six inning starters so the population of them is actually contracting and only the the better ones should be surviving yeah last yesterday nick anderson got a save and kevin mccarthy also got a save both of those are people who have the same names as more famous people um but they also both got their first save last year. And that means 125 players now have a save this year, which is more than in all of 2009. More also than in all of 2005. There were 124 in each of those years. So your trend that you identified a couple years ago of the democratization of saves is truer than ever. Neither McCarthy nor Anderson is any good,

but they both got saves yesterday. So 125, that's more. If you remove three inning saves from that, because some guys who have one save, it's because they came into a blowout, neither of which is true of McCarthy or Anderson, but it is true of some. Still well ahead of the pace of last year and previous previous years although not quite so striking all right then well fantasy

players don't pay for saves don't pay for saves just get just pick up nick anderson kevin mccarthy get our first piece of fantasy baseball advice in seven years fantasy players have been hanging on waiting for a hot tip there it is it's the same tip that you've been reading forever but it's even more true today freddie freeman quote in this verducci article as hitters we've gone back to the idea of let's get into their bullpen which uh a lot of writing was done on pitchers going away from that old idea do you think that's wise should you be trying to get into the bullpen or should you just hit your pitch yeah i don't think you should try to get into the bullpen it's now i feel like the the way that pitching is now there's such a advantage for the pitcher to getting deep counts two strike counts particularly that batters are so the all of the offense all the missing offense in baseball is basically two strike offense like

there's so many two strike counts and it's so hard to hit with two strikes now because pitchers are so good at striking you out that I think that the benefit of hitting, you know, of being active early in counts and trying to hit the best pitch you see outweighs the benefit of trying to get into the bullpen, even if you do think it is useful to get into the bullpen. Yeah, I agree. And lastly, I want to give you a quote that has nothing to do with any of this. I want to go back to Nicky Lopez, Ben. Okay. Nicky Lopez, High Baseball IQ, that article. He has a quote in this article.

This is an article about his life. It was written in his hometown newspaper. Since I was four years old, he said, everyone wanted to be an astronaut or a doctor, whatever, but I wanted to be an astronaut or a doctor whatever but i wanted to be a baseball player like is that a thing all the kids want to be doctors but he had this unconventional dream of making the major leagues is baseball really that dead in culture that everybody wants to grow up to be doctors and nicky lopez was the nerd who wanted to be a major leaguer? You get picked on for wanting to be a professional athlete in this obscure sport. Oh, gosh, I hope not. Baseball will really be dead when aspiring to be a big leaguer. I wasn't sure what to make of that quote because I thought that if he had just said doctor,

then I could see his point being like everybody was practical and their parents and their counselors told them to do something practical with their life but i stuck with baseball but he also says astronaut yeah which is the opposite like an astronaut is the genre of impractical like a dream job for a four-year-old so i'm not sure if he's saying that a baseball player everybody else was crazy and wanted to be astronauts or everybody else was practical and wanted to be doctors. They're opposites. I don't know. Good quote.

Good job, Nicky Lopez. Yep. High baseball IQ. All right. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks for listening. I'm enjoying these Sam follows up on old episode segments.

Someone in the Facebook group, I think, suggested that we should call them reflectively wild. I noticed that they're mostly Sam disagreeing with things that Jeff and I said, but I guess that makes sense. He's only going to bring it up if he has something to add or counter. Wouldn't be very interesting if he just said, I agreed with everything you said about that. So I'm in suspense every time now, waiting to hear what he will dredge up from early this year or last year. Quick follow-up on a couple things Sam and I discussed after we talked. The Mets fined but did not suspend Jason Vargas and a not particularly contrite Mickey Calloway. Brody Van Wagenen said the altercation was disappointing. It was regrettable on many levels, but he gave another vote of confidence to his embattled manager. Calloway called it a misunderstanding. He said, I don't need to tell my side. That doesn't help me in any way. And he thinks his outburst showed that he was a passionate competitor. puma and others that brody van wagenen has on multiple occasions during games this season texted staffers presumably in the clubhouse to direct mickey calloway to make moves during games including pulling pitchers which is pretty unorthodox for a gm to do that during a game as opposed to saying something after the game certainly didn't go over well when sam and i tried to do that with the stoppers we learned our lesson and one of those pitchers who was

reportedly pulled at wagenen's behest jac deGrom, who spoke on behalf of the players, said that their main focus is turning the page. So we too will turn the page. The other update, as for the matter of whether hard-throwing relievers are burning out quickly, well, we can add one to that list. Cardinals Jordan Hicks has a torn UCL, which means he is likely headed for Tommy John surgery. That's a blow to the Cardinals, and it's unfortunate for fans because Jordan Hicks is fun. But I will admit to being not completely flabbergasted that the guy with 102.4 mile per hour average four-seam fastball this year might develop elbow problems. There is a little bit of a correlation there. You can buy my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players.

Thanks to all of you who have written in in some form or another to tell us that you like the book. Thanks to those of you who have left a review on Amazon and Goodreads. Those really help us out. If you've asked your library to order a copy, that helps us out too. Tell a friend, give it as a gift, or just gift it to yourself. I hope and think you'll enjoy it. You can also support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. And I should just say, because I rarely remind people that there is a reason to support the podcast on Patreon other than the fact that it just helps

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If you're at the higher levels, you can qualify for an autographed copy of my book with Sam. You can be on a listener email show. So there's some swag you can get. There's some perks. There's some rewards in addition to the satisfaction of having supported something you like. So we do thank everyone for pitching in on Patreon as they can. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review and subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. And you can contact us via email at podcast at fan graphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you're a supporter, if you are a supporter, please do message us through Patreon because we will be more likely to see it and answer it. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And Sam and I will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. A fading face in the picture frame.

Well, I'll be waiting when the cuckoo calls. A different place, but the same far walls. I hear you crying for somebody's arms. Come home away from home.